


Imitation

by Mireille



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-07-29
Updated: 2004-07-29
Packaged: 2018-08-16 14:24:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8105833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mireille/pseuds/Mireille
Summary: Doyle thinks about Angel's actions at the end of "In the Dark."





	

The sun is nothing but a star, Doyle tells himself, and so if Angel wants to give up the chance to walk in the sun, then at least there are a million other stars out there to look at. 

And he can kind of see Angel's point, the one about how this wasn't genuine redemption, and it was too easy, which made it less valuable. And the point about there not being anyone out there to fight for the people whose problems couldn't be solved in the sunlight. There are plenty of heroes able to ride off into the sunset, and what Los Angeles needs is one who has to disappear before the first light of day. 

Doyle gets that, and for the first time, he really *knows*, all the way down, that Angel's the real deal. He's known Angel was a hero before that, of course, but he's sort of been thinking of him as the undead equivalent of a cop--a good cop, anyway--or a fireman, or the woman who had the classroom across from his, back in another life, the one who lived on canned soup so that she could make sure the kids in her class had clean clothes and soap and all the stuff food stamps didn't buy. A hero. A normal, everyday, kind of hero. And that had been a lot, for Doyle, because he'd stopped believing in those a few years back. 

But he'd been wrong. Angel was a hell of a lot more than that. Angel was a champion. The chosen instrument of the Powers That Be, and that meant a lot more than just that he had a scruffy Irish half-demon reporting to him with visions of people in need. And Doyle was getting that now. That Angel was bigger than just an everyday hero. Angel was--

Yeah, and maybe Doyle was getting a lot more than that, now. Maybe he was starting to understand-- Actually, he wasn't quite sure *what* he was starting to understand. 

He wasn't sure of a lot of things, but hey, it was better than what his life had been like a few months ago, when he'd been pretty sure it was going to end in the gutter. Certainty was definitely overrated, some of the time. 

And, well. He knew about Buffy. Not that Angel talked about her much--Angel didn't talk about *anything* very much, but he talked about Buffy even less than anything else--but he knew the story. He'd had to recount it to Angel, by way of explaining that yes, he did know who Angel was and what he was doing in Los Angeles, so he couldn't say that he didn't know who she was, or what she meant to Angel. Or that she was a hero, too, another champion, and so she deserved Angel in ways that he wasn't ever going to. 

He'd given her up, just like he'd given up the chance to walk in the sunlight, but that didn't mean that wasn't what he really wanted, that anything else could be more than a faint imitation.

Then again, if the stars didn't shine as brightly as the sun, at least you didn't go blind when you looked at them.


End file.
